I recently encountered a user who went on a spree of suggesting edits, removing the tags from titles while doing nothing else. There were roughly 131 edits over a 4 hour period. Many of them were rejected as too minor, some were approved. It probably doesn't help that nearly all of his first attempts were approved, and given his all-time rejection count of 51 nearly 2/3 total were approved.

The flow seems to have stopped, but I'm not sure what I should do if I caught this in action again.

Is there a mechanism in place to catch such users? What should I do when I see this, besides reject the edits as too minor?

flag one of their comments for moderators attention and explain what is going on.
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MeehowJun 4 '14 at 13:49

1

Will that be helpful? There was a 4 hour window, my experience is that custom flags can sometimes take days to handle.
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Brad KochJun 4 '14 at 13:50

custom flags are priority ones in the moderators queues, afaik. Unless the edits aren't really harmful, not vandalising posts (even though they are minor) it's the reviewers who should be punished for approving them not the one who suggested them.
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MeehowJun 4 '14 at 13:51

2

I tried that once, "I'm not flagging the question, but the editor. Please check his edit history. 15 edits last 5 minutes and counting (the only change is calander/calendar). Most other edits are equally small." Took some time, but eventually the flag was marked as helpful. I don't know if it was due to moderator action, but the editor didn't have any edits for 1.5 months following my flag.
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Stewie GriffinJun 4 '14 at 13:55

@RobertP. Mods don't have any means of edit banning users. Their only real options are a full suspension or just a warning message. The reviewers they can actually review ban.
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ServyJun 4 '14 at 14:01

@Servy, I didn't know. That makes me wonder, do the moderators/community want us to flag reviewers that approves several "too minor" edits?
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Stewie GriffinJun 4 '14 at 14:09

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@RobertP. Sure, if you know if reviewers consistently reviewing improperly you're more than welcome to bring it to a moderators attention.
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ServyJun 4 '14 at 14:21

Now that the community wiki automation is out, I wholly disagree with the idea that an edit can be too minor. Besides the reviewer time cost, what's the harm in a one character edit?
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TankorSmashJun 4 '14 at 15:52

"Superior state" seems a bit subjective. If someone just lost their job, and needs to bump up their SE numbers for potential employers, they can game the system by looking for common spelling mistakes, etc. Is that really superior? It doesn't mean they are contributing to the stacks in a meaningful way, nor really improving the overall quality of the content, IMO.
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IAmNaNJun 4 '14 at 16:27

I really dislike this behavior. You get folks who make edits that consist of removing a spurious blank. In several cases (by the same editor) I've seen the xcode tag added to questions where it did not apply (and where in at least one case a prior edit immediately after the question was posted had removed the tag). The problem with this is that it creates zombies which one is apt to study and even reply to before noticing that they are 4 years old. This does not improve the quality of the site at all. (I'm all for ending the practice of granting points for edits.)
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Hot LicksJun 4 '14 at 20:52

1 Answer
1

There is not an automated feature in place to catch these users, this is where the reviewers are helpful to the mods. If you see suggested edits that are incorrect hitting the review queue, you can always flag one of the edited posts for moderator attention using an "Other" flag.

When you flag for moderator attention, just include some details about the issue. I'd suggest including a few links to some of the suggested edits and explain that the user suggested many incorrect edits and reviewers approved them. While moderators don't have the ability to ban users from suggesting edits, we can ban reviewers who approved them. If the situation warrants it, then we can contact the user explaining why the edits are incorrect. The flag will go into the review queue and it does take us time to get through those flags.

If you aren't sure if the edits require the attention of a moderator, you could also go to chat, like The Tavern. There may be users in the chatroom who could help you decide if mods need to be involved. They could also help rollback incorrect edits, if needed.

Alright then, raising a custom flag just to be sure this instance gets handled, will fall back to that in the future.
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Brad KochJun 4 '14 at 14:22

@BradKoch That's what the custom flag is for - cases where moderator attention is needed and the community can't resolve the situation themselves.
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bluefeet♦Jun 4 '14 at 14:24

Hey @bluefeet, just noticed that the flag hasn't been handled almost a week later, any feedback on why my custom flags might be handled so slowly? Any other feedback about the flag itself? Other users are reporting similar issues; seems important to take action.
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Brad KochJun 10 '14 at 18:42

@BradKoch We currently have 1.4k+ flags in the queue that are waiting for review. All the mods are volunteers and would like to have lives outside of being a moderator, so please be patient with us. :)
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bluefeet♦Jun 10 '14 at 18:44

Gotcha, didn't realize we were backlogged that far and thought it might be something I did. Perhaps it's time to call up more moderators again.
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Brad KochJun 10 '14 at 18:49